Tag: mommy blog

Sometimes I wonder why I am keeping track of every penny we spend raising Babystar.

That number at the bottom is mildly soul-crushing.

And then I think how satisfying it’s going to be to show her when she is nine and doesn’t clean her room. Or when she is sixteen and scratches my car. Or when she is forty and picking out nursing homes.

Mostly that last bit.

But keeping all of these notes is tedious and sometimes a bit boring. Not everything deserves it’s own post.

I bought a new outfit for Kelsey, which is Babystar’s favorite baby doll (these days). Kelsey is the cheap Honestly Cute brand baby doll from Target. (Babystar ignores her pricey American Girl Bitty Baby. It’s kind of hilarious.) I have no idea where Babystar heard the name Kelsey, but she named her all by herself. We don’t even know anyone named Kelsey. The $9.99 outfit was definitely a bribe, but I don’t remember for what exactly. Life, probably.

I bought a hat and mittens set for $7.99 because I couldn’t find any of Babystar’s hats. I later found three hundred hats in the closet.

I bought four sets of mittens for fifty cents each, hoping to have at least two mittens in the house at all times. I am not hopeful.

I have bought four really cool packets of on-the-go fun. They are little coloring books with a few crayons and stickers. You can find them for $1 each at Target or Micheal’s. We have already used the Rudolph one and the My Little Pony. I still have dinosaurs and Trolls in case of emergency. I really need to create my own busy bags. Maybe that will by my New Year’s Resolution. It’s nice and attainable.

Oh, and I spent $3.60 more on sticker packs. Usually as baby-be-good-bribes.

I broke my car-screen cherry with this kid and paid $3.99 to rent Trolls Holiday on my iPad last week for Babystar to watch in the car while we ran four hundred errands. Bonus: I now know all the words to Trolls Holiday.

Just kidding. I already knew all the words.

We paid $17.99 to buy Blue’s Clues Season 3 because we were tired of streaming the free Season 1. And Season 3 has the holiday episode. And Babystar we both love Blue’s Clues.

We had a HUUUUUGE blowout while spontaneously out with friends a while back but luckily we were literally next door to a kid’s consignment shop. Like, the only one in my area. I bought her an adorable Marimekko outfit for $16.95 that is still too big but we rolled the pants up. I also paid $17.50 for used shiny gold shoes because I was a little stressed out and she wanted them even though she didn’t actually poop on her shoes. Thank goddess.

And we have two Advent Calendars for her this year. She loves her $2.59 ‘Snowman Chocolate’ (there is a picture of a snowman on the front) and remembers it every day and she is getting REALLY GOOD at finding and recognizing the numbers so I think we need these babies year round. I also got her a puzzle advent calendar ($4.95) that is less popular but she still likes it. After she gets her ‘snowman chocolate’ and cons at least one of her older siblings out of their ‘snowman chocolate’. Suckers.

We have a really cute snow globe ornament that has never made it on to the tree because Babystar NEEDED it in Nordstrom Rack and then totally forgot about it. I just found it in the bottom of a bag the other day. Oh well. It’s pretty. And $3.97 is a fair deal for twenty minutes of Toddler Patience.

We also have a vintage Apple Dumplin’ doll. You know, Strawberry Shortcake’s little sister. She already has been separated from her socks and her turtle but they are around somewhere. Vintage toys on eBay combined wth one-touch PayPal and insomnia get me EVERY TIME. This one was $16.95. Plus I totally have Strawberry Shortcake and some of her friends wrapped under the Christmas tree, but Target wasn’t selling the retro Apple Dumplin’ doll. And Babystar loves Apple Dumplin’ thanks to her big sister showing her a few youtube videos.

But Babystar calls her Apple Donut. Because what the hell is a dumpling? I love it.

It has EVERYTHING. A scarf ballet, a fully stocked art studio, a cow that you can milk (but don’t drink it), a diner with all the (fake) food you can eat, an actual ambulance to play in, an indoor carousel, and a Wegman’s. And that isn’t even half of the cool stuff at the Children’s Museum of Richmond. This place is literally the best children’s museum I have ever seen.

And it is right down the street from my oldest daughter’s college. We bought the $180 yearly membership (plus additional adult) so we have a fun place for Babystar to play on visits. She has never gotten bored here. The single downside is that she never wants to leave when they close at 5pm. We have been a few times now and we haven’t even played with everything. On our most recent visit, Babystar mostly dug in the rubber sand for dinosaur bones and then cooked her sister and I a very hearty meal.

Have you ever had ketchup in your coffee? I highly recommend it.

The visit before, we spent a lot of time in the art studio making masks. Another time, she did water experiments for an hour at the super awesome water table. (I totally brought about five extra shirts last Friday and she didn’t even LOOK at the water table. Of course.)

There are also locations in Short Pump, Chesterfield, and Fredericksburg. We may check them out sometime as they are included in our membership. But the nice lady that sold us the membership said that those locations are not as big. And I am certain that none of them are five minutes from any of my children’s colleges. If we do go, I will report back.

Regular admission is $9/person. (Babies under one are free.) We only paid the regular admission once, actually. Then we did the math and realized that we should just buy a membership. So far, we have gone to the museum every time we visit Richmond. Since at least three of us (Babystar, the college girl, and whoever is driving) visit each time, the membership will pay for itself shortly.

Like many children’s museums that I have seen, this one has a lot of different areas to play, and each area is sponsored by a local or regional business. The main difference is that THIS museum has SO MANY areas to play.

According to Becca, she is a mom of two, wife of one, Bachelor franchise lover, Patriots fan, higher ed professional, adequate friend, extreme athlete (no), and descendant of Dutch royalty (maybe, prove she’s not). She thinks life is really funny and likes to stop and write about it at withloveandalittleselfdeprecation.com.

And she is FREAKING HILARIOUS. I am a little bit mad that we aren’t best friends. I want to hang out with her all the time and drink wine and chase bats (the animal kind not the baseball kind) and go adult sledding. Instead, I follow her blog and all of her social media and you should too! She is on Twitter and Facebook and the regular awesome internet.

Becca answered a few of my questions and now I love her more.

1. What is YOUR favorite kid’s show that your kid watches? Wait, do you let your kids watch tv? If yes, what is your favorite show? If no, stop lying.

We let the kids watch a half hour of tv a day because apparently my husband and I both hate silence and sitting… I’m sure this rule is going to do the ole “bend and snap” at some point. But for now I can pretend to be all sanctimommy and come up with some baloney about “screen time” and “exploratory play” when in all reality the 1 year old is only actually interested in the tv for 45 seconds and the 2 year old is perfectly satisfied with two morning Daniel Tiger life lessons before heading to daycare. So to answer your question, Daniel Tiger. Curious George is fine too, but Daniel never tries to scale a building which is better role modeling for my toddlers. Also, Daniel’s parents are the most patient mammals on the whole dang earth… Just once I want to see Mrs. Tiger lose it a little and need a glass of Pinot.

2. What are Sundays like in the fall at your house? Like, game on in the background or at the stadium with painted faces or somewhere in between?

Game day? Drama, drama, drama. I’m a Patriots fan born and raised. My husband is die hard Broncos. We keep Etsy retailers in business by regularly paying people to make us split Bronco and Patriots gear for our kids. That’s what they wear on Sundays when we are both upstairs getting the kids dressed. If it is just one of us, well then you know darn well those kids are coming downstairs in head to toe Orange or Blue and Red. My husband already has won over our 2 year old to team Denver, so I’m putting in some overtime with the 1 year old. When they get older we will get back to going to games but for now, quite honestly we are just hoping that we can get them down to their naps before the end of the first quarter.

3. It’s the PTA Bakesale: homemade, store bought, or NOPE?

In my head right now? Homemade because I make killer chocolate chip cookies. In reality? In 3 years when my kids are in school I’ll probably be sending in a loaf of store bought bread, a box of mac and cheese, and a pack of plastic forks because I’ll forget if this was supposed to be a bake sale, a food drive, or a birthday party and I’ll want to cover my bases.

I am still mad at every Pats fan everywhere for the defeat of the Jags in the 2007 season playoff game that was 14-14 at halftime and we now know that Belichick totally cheats at halftime so he probably used a time machine or something but I make an exception for this woman because she is so totally awesome. Ok, fine, I don’t actually harbor ill will for New England fans but I do care enough to bring that game up with everyone in a Patriots jersey that I see after having three glasses of wine. I mostly drink wine at home on Friday nights now so the circles in that Venn diagram have almost completely split apart.

Go follow Becca (virtually, not around her neighborhood). You’ll thank me later. Or now. You can thank me now.

Babystar and I are out of town this week for a funeral. It’s not the sad kind, except that all funerals are sad. My Uncle Frank lived to be 91 years old and was in good spirits but also in pain when I saw him last year. In fact, the wake was a little too serious this afternoon because the man who would make everyone laugh was lying in the casket instead of telling stories, joking with the adults, and lovingly teasing the children.

This guy.

I had this lighthearted learning-to-count post scheduled for tomorrow, but instead I am in a hotel room with my sleeping toddler in a town full of memories and so instead here is this.
(Turning forty and then a family funeral is making me soft. We will return to our regularly scheduled sarcasm shortly.)

So. Me. Nostalgia.

I was a Teen Mom before it was capitalized. I had my first child at the so very young age of nineteen. This was 1996; MTV still played music videos and books still had paper.
There was no Teen Mom television show; there was no 16 and Pregnant. There was no Facebook, no Instagram, and no Twitter.

There. Was. No. Internet. Can you imagine? We still spelled out all of our words. OMGLOL.
Ok, there was a tiny bit of internet. We had America Online and we paid by the minute and the chat rooms were (mostly) full of creepy old men. Computer games were on floppy disks. We still addressed our emails like old-fashioned letters.

There were no DVRs. My son (and later daughter, born in 1999) watched Blue’s Clues on VHS cassettes like every other child of the Nineties. (Babystar watches Blue’s Clues on my phone in Target if she hasn’t had a nap.)

As regular readers know, just as my two children of the LAST MILLENNIUM were headed off to college, I had a brand new baby in 2015.

Back in 1996, the doctors would have called mine a Geriatric Pregnancy. In 2015, it was no biggie. I was an Old Mom, but so was everyone else.

(Um, who coined geriatric pregnancy? Because that person is clearly an asshole who has never met a pregnant woman.)

Raising babies in the 1990s and raising babies now is mostly the same but also ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

We still need to take care of the babies in utero.

I remember the excitement of the sonograms in the 1990s. We had one grainy black and white sonogram at the beginning of the pregnancy to check out the heartbeat and then one later on in the pregnancy to check the fetal progression (and usually find out the sex!). They were very exciting and you got a nice snapshot of a blurry black and white semicircle so you could try to figure out which side was the head.

In 2015, I had SO MANY SONOGRAMS. It felt like they lasted for hours. They were definite twenty to thirty minute ordeals. I remember wishing them over so I could go pee. The technicians checked out every little tiny part of baby in utero, which is AMAZING. Science is amazing! But it also took forever (to me), as I was expecting a quick slimy belly time and ‘ok there’s a baby cool beans’ and then boom, done.

We still need to birth the babies.

Back in the nineties, my labor was induced with my first two babies because they both went past their due dates. My son was only five days past his due date (and it was a first pregnancy!) when the doctor insisted I head to the hospital for induction. He called me high risk solely because of my age and my poor little baby boy was born jaundiced after over twenty-four hours of labor — including over two hours of active pushing. After he was born, the doctor reached his arm into my body to pull out the baby’s placenta. (Yes, you read that right and it hurt more than the actual birth. Also, I’m sorry for that godawful visual but I LIVED it.) The nurses weighed and measured and bathed and swaddled my son before finally handing him to his father (not me) and I had no idea that there was any other way to do this childbirth thing.

I went to a different doctor when pregnant with my second child. My daughter was induced at ten days past her due date, but other than that the labor was easy. I’m sure it was just luck, because ideas had not changed much in two years and I still had never even heard the term ‘Birth Plan’.

Thankfully, we know much more about childbirth now. I think both the medical professionals AND the parents are much more informed. My doctor and I agreed from the beginning that we would not force baby to come before she was ready. I have heard from friends (and strangers on the internet) that babies are not even really considered late until two weeks past their due date. My placenta was delivered by the doctor. My baby was placed on my body as soon as humanely possible (she had an issue but it was resolved in minutes) and we had skin to skin contact, which we now know is as important for parent-to-baby microbe transmission as it is for parental bonding.

I have read that some parents are choosing to delay the cutting of the cord for a few minutes to help baby transition earth-side. I know that a lot of people are choosing midwives and doulas and home births. I love that there is a conversation between parents and the medical professionals. I love that we now know more about our options and have choices and voices as parents.

We still have to feed the babies.

In 1996, I took my jaundiced son home and a nurse came with us to set him up in what we lovingly called ‘his nightclub’. He had to spend almost every minute under ultraviolet lights with his eyes completely covered and the rest of his body completely naked. We were told to take him out every two hours to baste him. (Just kidding. We had to feed him and clean him and clean the dishtowel lined baking pan in which he laid. Lay? Lie? You know what I mean.) The nurse helped me with breastfeeding but also brought us ready made bottles of Similac from the hospital and encouraged supplementing ‘so mama could get some sleep’.

His bilirubin count came down and he was out from under the lights within a week, but the resulting nipple confusion from the bottles that we were encouraged to feed him made breastfeeding difficult. I know that NOW. I did not understand what was going on back then, so I kept offering the bottle when he had a difficult time at the breast. No one told me to stop.

I was much more successful nursing my second child, but again, I think it was luck.

With my last little sweetheart, I was inundated with the benefits of breastfeeding before baby was even born. I had a Feeding Plan in place while still pregnant. The nurses at the hospital all checked to make sure baby was latching well, and even kept the baby in the room so I could feed her every two hours (or more) from the moment she was born. I took a breastfeeding class before leaving the hospital, where I asked about pumping so others could feed the baby while I slept. The woman teaching the class told me that was a horrible idea and if I wanted her to, she would be happy to speak with my husband to make sure that he didn’t feel like he had to ‘have a turn’ feeding the baby. (Um, I was just wondering if I would ever sleep again, but the message was definitely received. Hard no.)

About six weeks in, my sweet little baby started having screaming fits at night for over an hour. My firstborn did the exact same in thing 1996: the doctor called it ‘colic’, and it lasted for almost a year. In 2015, the pediatrician put ME on an elimination diet to see if something I was eating was affecting the baby. The baby was indeed sensitive to dairy via my breastmilk for almost the first year of her life. I now think that my poor baby boy had the same issue twenty years ago, but the doctors didn’t know to even try removing dairy from his diet.

Per the doctor’s recommendation, I started my firstborn on cereal at four months and he was eating jars of Beechnut by six months. Twenty years later, I read for hours the benefits of Baby-Led Weaning versus purees. I decided to feed this baby purees because she had no teeth by the time she seemed interested in food at seven months old. I made all of her pureed baby food myself to avoid preservatives and whatever other scary chemicals are in ready made baby food. I know IN MY HEAD that ready made baby food is fine and certainly more healthy that it was twenty years ago but the information overload really got to me so I felt like I had to make all of her food in order to be a good mother. The mommy guilt is strong these days.

We still need to raise the babies.

The internet is a wonderful and terrible thing. I love reading Mommy Blogs and being a part of parenting groups on Facebook. I can now get advice from literally hundreds of people within minutes. Twenty years ago, we had a handful of baby books and our friends and family to turn to for answers. Your friends and family generally won’t tell you the worst case scenario every time, but you can ALWAYS find that on the internet. Dr. Google is terrifying, irresistible, and always available at 2am when that last thing you need to do is freak out over your child’s symptom that is probably fine but might kill them immediately. My 21st century baby often had pretty severe dyschromia, which is like marbled skin tone, as an infant. The internet told me that it was totally normal except sometimes. She might be fine or she might need emergency medical treatment. Of course I called her doctor in the middle of the night who told me to get offline immediately and that I would not be able to miss it if my baby became limp and needed to go to the ER. I have tried with mixed success to stop searching baby’s symptoms, at least when the sun is down.

My firstborn’s first birthday party was a few friends and family bringing gifts and eating a cake that I made from a boxed mix and decorated myself. The cake was kind of ugly but no one really cared and I barely even noticed. Including sodas and paper plates and napkins, I probably spent $50.

Today I would post that cake on Instagram with the hashtag #PinterestFail.

Thanks to Pinterest, (and also thanks to having a much older sister that loves Pinterest), my millennial baby’s first birthday party was gorgeous and themed and crafty and we all drank out of mason jars and the entire house was decorated and we spent HOURS on DIY crafts and STILL spent $500. I love Pinterest but I also kind of despise Pinterest.

I totally let the 90s babies drink soda, but only Sprite because it didn’t have caffeine. I can count on my fingers the number of times my two-year-old has had juice. JUICE. She had never had soda. Maybe when she’s eighteen.

I remember telling my two older kids how big they were on their first birthdays and turning their car seats around so they could see the world. I will rear-face this toddler until she can convince me, via Powerpoint, why she is old enough to forward-face.

I dressed my first two babies in baby clothes. Baby clothes with Winnie-the-Pooh or ladybugs or dinosaurs or cutesy flowers or some other type of childish motif. My 2015 baby wears rock band tees and handmade pants made from organic cotton and purchased from an independent shop on Etsy. (And Cat and Jack from Target because we are basic/AWESOME like that.)

In the nineties, we worried about how much tv to let the kids watch. Now we have to decide if the toddler can play with our phones, our tablets, our laptops. I personally do not let my toddler play games on my phone or iPad but I GET WHY PEOPLE DO. I totally love that she can video chat with her grandparents and other relatives that live far away. It makes everyone seem closer. That helps, this week. And all the time. But also this week.

I used to print out photos from actual cameras that used actual film and send them with Christmas cards to our far away relatives. Now I can send pictures via text or email or social media. The extended family definitely feels more close. Babystar met a lot of new (to her) cousins this week so I suspect the FaceTime will be flowing. Are we the Jetsons? I think maybe we are, so why doesn’t my car fly?

I also FREAKING ADORE that today my phone is also a camera. AND it records videos! Twenty years ago a video recorder was at least the size of a tennis shoe and maybe the size of a pair of heavy boots. I have a few albums of baby pictures of my first two children, and a few videos from Christmases or school plays. I have literally over ten thousand pictures and hundreds of videos of Babystar already.

And I took a few of her playing with her new cousin-friends at the wake today.

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What is it going to be like raising a teenager in another fifteen years? Will we have self-driving cars by then? Please tell me we will have self-driving cars by then.

You guys I have had SO MANY check ups this week. And this doctor doesn’t even take my insurance. But she does take popsicles. And so far, I have been declared ‘ok’. I am also EXTREMELY up to date on my shots. And your shots. And all of the neighbors shots.

(Lucky me. My husband had the audacity to cough during a check up and he was declared SICK. Babystar is a really good doctor. Even if she pronunces check up as chep-uck.)
Babystar is TERRIFIED of the doctor. All was well until our last visit, when she screamed and fought everything. She didn’t even like the scale. Which is weird because she LOVES the scale at home. (They wouldn’t take my word for her weight, though. I guess that is good but it was annoying.)

She also cannot handle band-aids if she actually has a need for one. She will put a band-aid on anything or anyone, including herself, any other time. I find them everywhere. In fact, I think I should add $7.99 for the multipack I bought recently because Babystar had used all the band-aids. And by ‘used’ I mean ‘wasted’. She can reach the band-aid drawer and almost always comes into the bathroom and pulls at least one out when I pee. Maybe more if I am too slow.

In an attempt to get her more comfortable with this whole doctor thing, I bought her a doctor kit. I really wanted an original Fisher-Price doctor set like the one I had when I was a kid. I totally should have stalked eBay or something. But I was impatient and I just bought the first one I found at Target. ($24.99)

Babystar LOVES it and I have had several thousand check-ups this week. According to the doctor, I am ok.

Adorably, when she bumps her head or stubs her toe, she comes to me for a check-up. As long as I use enough of the doctor tools, I can declare her ‘ok’ and she seems to buy it. I hope she doesn’t ever require proof of my nonexistent PhD.

Have you bought a doctor kit for your toddler? Did it help him or her feel more comfortable at the actual doctor’s office?
RAISING BABYSTAR: $21,173.44

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